Steam use in industrial applications is said to be practically endless, but unmonitored steam lines often end up costing operators a significant amount of money in maintenance and unplanned downtime.
The STM-10 steam trap monitoring solution comprises wireless compact sensors monitoring critical process conditions and software, which uses data from the sensors and smart algorithms to confirm whether a steam trap is blocked or leaking.
The smart algorithms used with the STM-10 are expected to help operators make changes for the better.
Combined with maintenance schedules, the STM-10 cuts energy costs and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions while reducing the risk of wet steam erosion damage.
The STM-10 was developed within Growth Hub, IMI’s innovation engine, driven by customer engagement, which has shown that it has often been difficult for maintenance teams to identify faults on valve traps due to a typical lack of sensors installed. As a result, control rooms will rarely identify the leaks and plant managers can be oblivious to problems that can lead to long periods of downtime and significant losses.
The solution can be installed on exposed pipes on either side of the steam trap. The associated asset monitoring cloud-based dashboard gives operators and maintenance staff the ability to instantly diagnose steam trap failures, allowing corrective actions to be initiated before problems begin to harm production yields.
It uses wireless long-range communications and thermal energy harvesting, making it a self-contained solution that can be installed by any member of the plant maintenance team.
Jackie Hu, CEO of automation at IMI, said: “Blocked and leaking steam traps can have a significant impact on plant performance, but can be difficult to identify using the standard data fed through to control rooms.
“STM-10 is an innovative solution to this challenge that has the potential to improve plant performance, delivering hundreds of thousands of dollars of savings and cutting CO2 emissions significantly.
“This is an example of the difference the Growth Hub can make in delivering innovative solutions to what are very challenging problems for plant managers.”